


Twelfth Night, or What You Endeavour

by AstridContraMundum



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Crack, Multi, Should be rated G but there are puns, absolutely ridiculous, all sorts of crack pairings and mistaken identities, needs its own sort of archive warning, shakespeare au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:13:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27139196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum
Summary: Instead of wasting his time mooning around over Count Jakes, Duke Bixby might be better off simply throwing himself at the mercy of the first person who washed up upon the shore of his duchy.... the first person who didn’t know what an awful lot of work the man could be....The first person who didn't know he wasn't a duke so much as an utter drama queen....
Relationships: Joss Bixby/Endeavour Morse, Peter Jakes/Endeavour Morse
Comments: 17
Kudos: 20





	Twelfth Night, or What You Endeavour

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for this! This definitely deserves my *dodging tomatoes* warning/disclaimer... 
> 
> And with this, it’s now more apropos than ever! 
> 
> *flees*

Nicholas the troubadour strummed thoughtfully upon his lute, mediating on the sweet sounds brought forth from the sheep’s-gut strings as he murmured the verses of “My Sweet Lady Kate.”

His brother, Ken, might think the song made them look like a bunch of ponces, but what did he know?

It had been top five back in Navarro.

And, besides, it was clear that the Duke was enjoying the song. He seemed to be straining after every note, a contemplative cast to his handsome face as he paced about the grand room, one appointed with paintings and thick carpets and gold and silver and alabaster treasures assembled from across a hundred lands. The Duke had a man, they said, who scoured the palaces of princes and maharajas, searching for rare antiquities to buy, to bring back to the shores of Silencia.

Can you imagine?

He was as rich as Croesus.

And as inconstant as the moon.

Every month the man had some new sworn beloved. Last spring, it had been Lady Kay from a neighboring house. And now it seemed to be, of all people, Count Jakes of Oxfordshire, a man well-known to be full of bitter humor, infamous for his sardonic bearing and cutting remarks.

Which—perversely enough—suited Duke Bixby all too well.

The Duke, it seemed, was one of those contrary people who was happy only when he was unhappy, who seemed to take pleasure in the sweet suffering of being thwarted in love.

The more ill-disposed towards him the objects of his affection, the more he chased after them still.

Nick couldn’t say he understood it himself—but, the man paid well, and he was a great audience for new material.

Nick strummed a few chords in a minor key, and Duke Bixby leaned against a marble column and sighed.

“If music be the food of love, play on,” he commanded. “After all, you can never have too much of a good thing, old man.” 

So Nick lowered his head over the fretboard, strummed the progression again, and began to sing the chorus of the ballad in a low and lulling voice.

_O Mistress mine where are you roaming?_

_O stay and hear, your true love’s coming,_

_That can sing both high and low._

_Trip no further pretty sweeting._

_Journeys end in lovers’ meeting,_

“That strain again!” Duke Bixby cried. “It had a dying fall! It came to my ear like a sweet sound that breathes upon a bank of violets!”

Nick rolled his eyes and continued plucking at the stings, creating a cascading little refrain, much like the fall of summer raindrops.

The Duke was always going on like that.

With him, it was all violets and roses and stars and “on a night like this, anything is possible.”

Perhaps that was his problem.

He had all the right words, Duke Bixby.

But no moves.

Sometimes, you just had to stop dancing around the issue, and say it. Look your beloved straight in the eye, and say, “ _I want to see what’s beyond the door.”_

“Enough!” Duke Bixby cried, then. “No more! It’s not as sweet as it was before!”

Nick stopped and looked up, surprised, as the Duke took a long drink from a glass of amber liqueur and furrowed his brow.

“What is it about love,” he asked, fretfully, “that makes you so yearn for something in one moment, and then tire of it the next?”

Count Strange, a visitor to the court, smiled as though he thought he might cheer the melancholy Duke up a bit. Strange was a sanguine sort of fellow, all right, really—not too proud to join him and the boys in a few jam sessions. He might be a nobleman, but he played a mean Crumhorn, just as if he’d spent years kicking around, paying his dues in leaky old taverns across the countryside.

“Will you not go for a hunt, my Lord?” Strange asked.

“Hunt?” Bixby asked.

“After the hart?”

“Ah, but it’s my heart that’s hunted,” Bixby protested.

He raised his eyes to where a golden chandelier lit with a hundred beeswax candles hung from the ceiling above and sighed once more.

“The first time Count Jakes told me to ‘ _sod off,_ ’ methought he purged the air of pestilence! In that instant, was I myself a heart, and all my desires since pursue me like relentless hounds!”

A messanger entered the hall, then, and right away the Duke snapped to attention, seeming to forget that he was supposedly so weak and faint with his endless moping around, striding across the room with new purpose, clearing it in just a few paces.

“How now? What news from him?” he called.  
  


“So please my Lord, I was not admitted,” the messenger said. “But from his maid, I received an answer. The sun itself will not behold his face until seven summers have passed. But, like a hermit—with naught for the world but contempt—will he walk his chamber round, drinking a Double Diamond or two, in toast to the memory of his former captain of the guard. All this in mourning of a dead counselor’s love, which he would keep fresh in memory.”

“Oh, if he would pay such a debt of love but to a chief counselor, how will he love when the rich golden shaft has killed all affections else that live in him?” Bixby cried.

Nick raised his eyebrows. 

_Golden shaft?_

Did the man ever listen to himself?

“How will he love,” the Duke asked, “When his liver, brain and heart—all those thrones of all feeling—are all supplied and filled with one self king?”

He and Strange shared an uncomfortable glance.

Nick could have gone without hearing that little detail, but….Ok.

Man.

It sounded as if Duke Bixby was getting sort of desperate.

Instead of wasting his time mooning around over Count Jakes, Duke Bixby might be better off simply throwing himself at the mercy of the first person who washed up upon the shore of his duchy, the first person who didn’t know what an awful lot of work the man could be...

The first person who didn’t know he wasn’t a duke so much as he was an utter drama queen.

****

Endeavour opened his eyes to find himself strewn over damp sand like a forgotten thing tossed by the sea and left washed upon the shore, the crash of the waves resounding heavily in his ears. He licked his dry lips only to find that they tasted of salt, and then, slowly, he stirred, pulled himself up, every muscle aching, as he rose to his feet.

He brushed the sand from his soaked clothes, and, in the distance, further down the coarse sand beach, he saw a sea captain disembarking from a small ship filled with a ragtag crew of survivors of the wreck.

And then his heart sank, leaving him desolate in his confusion.

There was no sign of Joyce amongst them.

“My Lord,” the captain called out to him as he ran down the beach, recognizing his position, no doubt, from the fineness of his embroidered doublet.

“What country, friend, is this?” Endeavour asked.

“This is Silencia, my Lord.”

 _“Silencia?_ ” Endeavour replied. “And what shall I do in Silencia? My sister, she is in Elysium. Although perchance she is not drowned. What think you, captain?”

“It is by chance that you were saved,” the captain said, consolingly. 

“Oh, my poor sister, and so perchance may she!”

“True, Sir. And, to comfort you with that thought…. When those poor number saved from the wreckage hung on our driving boat, I saw your sister bind herself to a strong mast, so that like a nymph on a dolphin’s back, she held acquaintance with the waves so long as I could see.”

Endeavour looked out, then, over the wide, blue-gray sea churning with waves that foamed with salt-white surf like armies of white horses, all the way to the distant horizon—as the wind swept over his face, ruffling at his dampened hair.

And then, he spun about, looking up and down the breadth of the sand.

There might be _some_ way, she had made it to shore.

Well. Of course, she had. 

Endeavour knew that he should thank the man for bringing him such cheerful news, and, in fairness, it was right there on the tip of his tongue: “For saying so, here’s gold.”

But then he thought the better of it, holding fast to his purse strings.

Who could say, what the price of beer might be in Silencia?

“Do you know this country?” Endeavour asked.

“Aye, sir. For I was bred and born not three hours’ travel from this place.”

“Who governs here?”

“A noble duke, in nature as in name.”

“What is the name?” 

“Bixby,” the captain replied. “But his friends call him Bix.”

“Bixby?” Morse said, murmuring the name to himself. “I have heard my father mention him. He was a bachelor, then.”

“And so he is now. Or, he was last I heard.” Then, the captain laughed. “Not for want of trying, though.”

“What mean you, captain?”

“Oh. Well, when last I left Silencia, there were a lot of rumours flying around, amongst the maids and gardeners—you know what the great will do the less will prattle of—that he did seek the love of Count Jakes.” 

“Who’s he?”

“The son of a count, who died some twelvemonth since. Upon his father’s death, he sought the advice of the captain of his guard, who has since also died. And now the Count, full of bile and displeasure with the world, hath abjured the company and sight of all. They say, that the last time Duke Bixby asked him out for a pint of ale, the Count told him most emphatically to ‘sod off.’ Told him that he was as ‘inconstant as stewed prunes.’ That he was a jarring, beetle-headed knave.”

Endeavour raised his eyebrows.

“Sounds a very saucy fellow,” he commented.

“But still,” Endeavour mused, “Would that I served that man, and so that I, too, might hide myself from the world. _”_

The captain looked upon him with a degree of suspicion, then, but Endeavour said nothing. He really could use some help, so it seemed a bad time to tell the captain that he was on the run from a band of corrupt noblemen from back in his home kingdom—from a band of brothers who called themselves “The Masons,” and who had sworn revenge upon him for uncovering their villainous plots.

_They’ll take everything you hold dear_ , they had said.

And now, the sea, perhaps, had done just that.

Suddenly, a tremendous wave crashed high upon the shore, leaving Endeavour and the captain awash with a shower of fine salt spray even as they backed further up onto the beach. As the wave rolled out again, pulling with fury against the sand, it left a trunk, broken open by the impact, in its wake—a trunk spilling over with women’s weeds.

And then, the idea struck him.

It might be impossible to keep hidden as Lord Endeavour—news of something as dramatic as a shipwreck was sure to spread fast, as the captain had suggested—but perhaps he might hide himself in plain sight, at least until he had a chance to find what he might be up against here, in this new land. Until he had the chance to see whether this Bixby or this Jakes might be friends or foes, whether they be allies of the Masons, or, perchance, of his.

The captain knew of his true identity, but perhaps Endeavour could part with that bag of gold after all, to buy his peace.

Endeavour went over and pulled a gown from the trunk. It seemed as if it might fit all right, if he let the laces out a bit. Might be a bit short about the ankles, but it should do well enough.

“There is a fair behavior in thee, captain,” Endeavour said. “And although, in my experience, people aren’t always what they seem, I believe you have a mind that suits your fair and outward character.” 

He spun around then, holding the dress up over his clothing, looking down at it as if to take the measure of his disguise.

Shame it wasn’t his colour, really … but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“I will pay you bounteously,” Endeavour said. “Conceal what I am. I’ll serve this duke. Thou shall present me as a maid to him. It may be worth thy pains, for I can sing and speak to him in many sorts of music.”

“Ah,” the Captain said, perking up at that. “You sing, my Lord? Do you know, ‘My Sweet Lady Kate?’ Or ‘Guinevere Sometimes?’”

Endeavour looked at him coldly.

“No,” he said.

The captain shrugged, then, as if to say _‘what the hell?’_

“Be you his maid and your mute I’ll be,” he said.

“When my tongue blabs, then let mine eyes not see.”

“I thank thee,” Endeavour said. “Lead me on.”

He’d stop and change in some hedgerow along the way, leave his fine doublet along with his true identity behind him. It would not be easy. He’d have to Endeavour to boot, and Endeavour in overplus.

But maybe he could pick up a bit of vermilion for his lips along the way. There must be _some_ place he could acquire some. That might help make the illusion more complete.

It mattered little. After all, the more important question was …

What the hell should he do with his hair?

**Author's Note:**

> We'll find out where he buys his lipstick now.....  
> oof!


End file.
